Search - Ringtailed Snorter :: Look Back In The Mirror

Although best known for his work in X Marks the Pedwalk, Sevren Ni-Arb also masterminded a bevy of industrial-ish side projects, including A-Head, U-Tek, Hyperdex-1-Sect, Pax, and Ringtailed Snorter. If he had difficulty coming up with good band names and a decent alias for himself, he more than made up for it with his talent as a musician and producer. Look Back in the Mirror collects most of the tracks from Ringtailed Snorter's two previous--and import-only--discs, Revealing Obstacles and Sexual Child Abuse, and it represents some of the more introspective work he's done. The material from Sexual Child Abuse is particularly strong, though it deals with an obviously difficult subject matter, and Ni-Arb stumbles in his choice to write lyrics and sing in (relatively poor) English rather than his native German. Where he shines is in his deceptively simple keyboard and drum programming, creating atmospheric soundscapes punctuated by treated samples and, on a couple of tracks, by the sirenlike vocals of Estefania, who registers somewhere between Cosey Fanni Tutti and Siouxsie Sioux. If you missed the imports the first time around, now's your chance. --Steve Landau